it sticks. I don't care--soldiers' hands ain't white, are
they, Pincher?"

The pretty dog at Horace's feet shook his ears, meaning to say,--

"I should think not, little master; soldiers have very dirty hands, if
you say so."

"Come," said Grace, who was tired of gazing at the far-off star-land;
"let's go down and see if Barbara hasn't made that candy: she said she'd
be ready in half an hour."

They went into the library, which opened upon the balcony, through the
passage, down the front stairs, and into the kitchen, Pincher following
close at their heels.

It was a very tidy kitchen, whose white floor was scoured every day with
a scrubbing-brush. Bright tin pans were shining upon the walls, and in
one corner stood a highly polished cooking-stove, over which Barbara
Kinckle, a rosy-cheeked German girl, was stooping to watch a kettle of
boiling molasses. Every now and then she raised the spoon with which she
was stirring it, and let the half-made candy drip back into the kettle
in ropy streams. It looked very tempting, and gave out a delicious odor.
Perhaps it was not strange that the children thought they were kept
waiting a long while.

"Look here, Grace," muttered Horace, loud enough for Barbara to hear;
"don't you think she's just the slowest kind?"

"It'll sugar off," said Grace, calmly, as if she had made up her mind
for the worst; "don't you know how it sugared off once when ma was
making it, and let the fire go 'most out'?"

"Now just hear them childers," said good-natured Barbara; "where's the
little boy and girl that wasn't to speak to me one word, if I biled 'em
some candies?"

"There, now, Barby, I wasn't speaking to you," said Horace; "I mean I
wasn't talking to _her_, Grace. Look here: I've heard you spell, but
you didn't ask me my Joggerphy."

"_Geography_, you mean, Horace."

"Well, Ge-ography, then. Here's the book: we begin at the Mohammedans."

Horace could pronounce that long name very well, though he had no idea
what it meant. He knew there was a book called the Koran, and would have
told you Mr. Mohammed wrote it; but so had Mr. Colburn written an
Arithmetic, and whether both these gentlemen were alive, or both dead,
was more than he could say.

"Hold up your head," said Grace, with dignity, and looking as much as
possible like tall Miss Allen, her teacher. "Please repeat your verse."

The first sentence read, "They consider Moses and Christ as true
prophets, but Mohammed as the g